Borrowed Time
by PiezoUnderscore
Summary: An unnatural abomination (SCP-001, S.D. Locke's Proposal) looms on the horizon. This story is a "Tragedy" for a reason. Read further at your own risk. This story is not suitable for children, or those who are easily disturbed.
1. Chapter 1: The Creature

The Hakurei Shrine Maiden slept silently under a calm night sky, as the wind blew softly outside.

She was a light sleeper, but she didn't hear it arrive until it was right at the door of her bedroom. It bashed through the paper-thin door, causing her to wake suddenly, and jump back.

Whatever that thing was, it smelled awful. Reimu blinked, rubbed her eyes, and focused on the intruder.

A dark mass lurched forward through the wall to her bedroom.

She cast a sealing spell at the being, hoping to stop its progress.

"R...eimu..". it said, in a strangely familiar voice. "Help m-glurgg"...

Reflexively, she shot at the creature with a much stronger blast of pure magic energy. It moaned, and then swung at her with a dripping appendage.

"What the hell?! What kind of demon are you?!"

She hit the creature with another magic blast, but the wound seemed to fill back in with the same mass. There was something different about this demon. It wasn't filled with the usual demonic essence, or even a desire to corrupt the balance. Every bit of its aura seemed to be made of incomprehensible madness.

Reimu shot one more spell at the creature, and then decided to run.

It was a moonless night, with very few clouds visible. Judging by the stars, it was about 1:00 AM. If there was anyone awake in Gensokyo right now, it would probably be the Scarlets. Even so, Reimu decided it would be best to seek out her most reliable helper, who she had been frienemies with for almost as long as she had been keeping the shrine.

She knocked quietly on Marisa's front door, but there was no answer. Quickly, Reimu glanced behind her to see if the creature had followed her. There was no trace of it.

Reimu used a spell to unlock the door to Marisa's cabin, then quietly stepped in, closing and locking the door behind her.

The floor creaked as she walked in. Her imagination got the better of her, and she checked behind her once more. Marisa's broom was propped up against the wall to her left, and a single wooded door stood ajar on her right. She slipped into Marisa's living room, checking behind her again. Still, nothing.

There was a small window on the east wall. Reimu ducked out of its sight, still dreading the creature she had seen. There was something genuinely wrong with it. Its smell, its magic aura, and its physical appearance were all nauseating even to recall. Whatever it was, she knew that its mere existence was a gravely ill omen.

Marisa's bedroom was upstairs, around a hallway behind the living room. With every step she took, she felt as though the creaking noise she made was connected to her entire body, and that, from only hearing the sound, the creature might be able to reach her in an instant. However, everything was still outside, as the veil of moonless night hung softly in the leaves of the forest.

Marisa was asleep, snoring softly. Reimu gently shook her shoulder.

"Marisa," whispered Reimu, anxiously. "wake up!"

Marisa mumbled something, and then rolled over.

Reimu shook her harder.

"Agh! Who's there?" said Marisa, sitting up. "Reimu? What the hell're'you doing here? It's the middle of the night!"

"Keep your voice down. There's something here... Something... not right" whispered Reimu.

"A youkai problem?"

"I don't think so. It's not like any youkai I've ever seen. It was just a mass of... ...something. It was asking for help, I think, but it attacked me. There's something very, very unnatural about its aura. I can't tell how strong it is, or what it wants, but its aura scared me like nothing I've seen before".

"Where is it?"

"It showed up behind my bedroom door. It broke through, and attacked me. Spells don't seem to work on it, it just gets right back up".

Marisa grabbed her Mini-Hakkero off of her bedside table, and stood up.

"Alright, take me to it!" she said.

Reimu was dressed in a white bathrobe. Marisa only wore shorts and a loose tanktop.

"Aren't you going to be cold in that?" asked Reimu.

"Oh... Right" said Marisa, quickly grabbing a shirt from her drawer and lazily putting it on. "There we go". Despite the strange circumstances, Marisa seemed upbeat as usual.

Marisa grabbed her broom from the entryway, and the two headed back to the Hakurei Shrine.

All was still in the trees below as they flew through the cold night air, to the shrine steps.

From above, no movement could be seen within. The front entrance to the shrine had been demolished, and the donation box upended.

Reimu picked up the box, and set it right-side up. She noticed a single sheet of paper caught on the edge, covered in a reddish brown slime.

"It's got that same damned smell" said Reimu, holding the piece of paper as far away from herself as possible.

"Wait, something's written on it".

Reimu carefully unfolded the paper, and read it aloud.

"To whoever finds this,  
I have ventured out late, and I... something blurry... tragic news from outside.

The end of times looms on the horizon.  
The light of day has turned on its children,  
something blurry... and mutilating us into monstrosities,  
such as what I have become.

As a strong youkai, I have been able to resist this evil  
for long enough to write this message and travel to the  
Hakurei Shrine at the edge of the barrier,  
but I have increasing difficulty controlling this form.  
In time, I will... ugh, there's something melted into the paper here...  
an unslayable, mindless beast, determined to  
drag you into the poisoned light.

Dear whoever, I beg of you.  
Employ the help of Kaguya, Remilia,  
whoever you think can do the job.  
If you care for the people of Gensokyo,  
make certain they never see the light of day,  
and if you manage to find the means to, please,  
spare me from this unnatural misery.

-Yukari Yakumo".

Reimu stopped reading. "I think I'm gonna throw up" she said, leaning against a board sticking up from the ground.

"If this is true, we've got to get everyone somewhere safe before day breaks" said Marisa.

"That, or we'll make sure the sun never rises. Come on, we're going straight to Eientei. If there's a chance of stopping this, she is our best shot..."


	2. Chapter 2: Luna 2

Marisa Kirisame, Kaguya Houraisan and Reimu Hakurei sat in the center of a dim, candle-lit room as Eirin returned with tea for all four of them.

"The moon is behind the earth" lamented Kaguya. "The spell can only work when the moon is visible".

"Isn't there any other way? Couldn't you use Jupiter or something?" demanded Marisa.

"The spell requires a celestial body of significant mass in close proximity to the earth, such that its gravitational force can be manipulated to counteract the earth's rotation" said Kaguya. "Also, as much as I want to help, how can we be sure this letter was not intended to deceive? We know that Yukari is not trustworthy, and we have even less reason to trust a mass of flesh that emerged from the barrier without warning and attacked you".

"That may be, Princess, but I'm still not sure" said Reimu. "Something about that creature was just... ...wrong. The way it moved, its very magic aura was unlike any human, youkai, god, vampire, fairy or anything I've ever seen... And the smell. That thing was created by a force that this world has never seen before, and that, alone, is reason to be cautious. If it turns out to simply be a rogue beast that arrived on our borders, then, oh well, we can exterminate it later. But on the off chance that the letter was truthful, and that maimed monstrosity is Yukari, deformed by the sun as it betrayed the earth, we're better safe than sorry".

"There is one way..." said Eirin.

"That would only work for a few days, and they'd never allow it!" protested Kaguya. "And we don't even know if any of this is true!"

"Face the facts, Kaguya. If this is true, then everyone on the moon is dead, or worse. Whatever state they're in, they won't care if we use Luna 2 to save the earth." [SCP-1812]

"Luna 2?" asked Reimu.

"There is an asteroid in orbit around the earth, which is essentially a second moon. It is hidden by a spell. It can not be seen unless revealed, and revealing its physical location to anyone who was born on earth will activate a curse placed upon it. When we first discovered it, we turned it into an evacuation stronghold for important political figures in the even that the moon were destroyed".

"Could it be used to prevent the sunrise?"

"It's not nearly as massive as the moon, but it could be used to create an unnaturally-long-lived-but-not-truly-imperishable night. It's 1:45 AM, we would have about six days before sunrise, during which we would have to work quickly to get everyone in Gensokyo and the neighboring Kappa Valley out of the open".

Marisa sipped her tea. "The Scarlets' Mansion is massive, and the windows are designed to block out the sun. If we could only get them to cooperate, there's almost certainly enough room for everyone in Gensokyo".

"If this turns out to be a hoax, you two are going to have a lot of explaining to do" said Kaguya. "But, considering the implications, I'm willing to take that risk".

Kaguya set down her tea, stood up, and walked out onto the front steps. Marisa, Eirin and Reimu followed.

For a moment, Kaguya scanned the sky for the asteroid she needed. After a moment, she spotted it, and turned back to the others.

"Eirin?".

"Yes, my lady?"

"Have you got sight of Luna 2?"

"Yes, my lady".

"Alright, let's do this. Reimu, Marisa. Do not, for any reason, look up, or try to determine the location of Luna 2".

The last time Kaguya had made the earth stand still, it had been different. The moon was more of a perfect sphere, and it was easier to hold.  
Trying to call on Luna 2, it felt slippery, and unbalanced. The spell seemed to jump out of her control.  
Eirin did her best to keep it stable while they created the field.

The air rippled around them as gravitational noise broke against them like waves against a cliff face. Marisa was knocked off her feet, and struggled to regain her balance.

"This had better be worth it!" shouted Kaguya.

The rippling stopped as the spell stabilized, and locked on.

Marisa lost her balance again, as the entire planet's population felt the cycle of day lurching to a crawl, like a massive elevator slowing down.

"1:49 AM" said Eirin. "We don't have a minute to lose".

"Alright" said Reimu. "I'll try to bargain with the Scarlets. Marisa, the Kappa have a massive underground complex, see if they're willing to take any evacuees".

"Gotcha!" said Marisa.

"We'll come with you" said Eirin.


	3. Chapter 3: Best-Laid Plans

**Kappa Valley - 135 Hours until sunrise.**

Marisa touched down at the front gates of the Kappa citadel.

It had only been two years since the Kappa had settled in the previously unnamed valley. The mineral-rich mountains, with their sheer, shining cliffs and waterfalls plentiful with energy had provided the once small band of Kappa the means to synthesize tools functionally equivalent to those made by humans, and even surpass them in technological craft. Their civilization now thrived, and was respected as a formidable power in and around Gensokyo.

On occasion, they would trade with outsiders, but care had to be taken not to draw suspicion. Many who lived within Gensokyo knew to remain wary of a certain faction of outsiders, known only as "The Foundation".

Reimu had warned those who asked that, if The Foundation were to learn of Gensokyo, the lives of all within would be in danger.

But the danger that lay before them now was not of the Foundation's doing. The Foundation was driven by fear of the supernatural, magic, and all things they did not understand. This was not their work. The nightmare that was creeping toward the horizon was one of pure madness, as celestial forces beyond comprehension had decided to poison the life-support on which all living things relied.

Even if everyone was relocated successfully, a permanent solution was needed.

Eirin and Kaguya arrived shortly after Marisa. Together, they approached the citadel gates.

Marisa knocked twice, and the sound echoed through the inside of the first floor.

There was no response for a moment. Lights were on inside, however.

"Hello?" called Marisa. "Is anyone in there?"

There was no answer. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called, and flew away.

Marisa stood on the steps, staring up at the massive door. After a minute, she turned back, and stepped back down to where Eirin and Kaguya waited.

As soon as her shoe hit the pavement, she heard the metallic groaning of the massive gate lifting.

The bright glare from within the chamber was painful to look at, at first, but, as the gate ascended, she could see a familiar silhouette standing in the doorway.

 **Scarlet Mansion - 135 Hours until sunrise.**

Reimu would have, ordinarily, marched straight into the Scarlets' Mansion. This time, she had to start things off on the right foot. Her only goal was to protect the people of Gensokyo, and she was willing to bow down and worship Remilia if that's what it would take.

A tent was propped up against the wall near the front gate, under which Hong Meiling was curled up in a sleeping bag. Reimu had always thought it was a strange decision of the Scarlets to only employ one guard for the entire perimeter.

"Hello?" called Reimu, towards the mansion.

She waited, and then called again.

In an instant, Sakuya Izayoi appeared in front of her.

There was a gust of displaced air rushing out of the way. Reimu stood firm, and looked Sakuya in the eyes.

"What are you doing up at this hour?" demanded Sakuya.

"I believe a great danger is on the horizon. May I speak to lady Scarlet?"

Sakuya sighed. "You're welcome to try, but don't expect to get any cooperation".

Sakuya led her through the doors of the Scarlets' Mansion. As they entered, a figure moved in the shadows.

Reimu turned to face the movement, and immediately recognized the mansion's resident sorceress, Patchouli Knowledge, frantically hurrying off to another room. She stopped, noticing Reimu.

"What's _she_ doing here?" demanded Patchouli. "I'm in the middle of something very serious, I don't need some human making trouble".

"I'm here to speak with Remilia" said Reimu. "A horribly disfigured creature arrived from the outside, bringing with it a warning. Something's happened to the sun, and its light has become poison. If Remilia will allow, the Scarlet Mansion could be used a s shelter from the sun".

"A creature, you say?" inquired Patchouli, her tone changing noticeably.

Everyone in the room had fallen silent.

"It wasn't any kind of creature I'd seen before. It was just a living blob of bones, organs and reddish slime. Its aura was full of pure madness" Reimu recalled. "It arrived just over an hour ago at the shrine, and attacked me. It left this behind".

She pulled the letter she had found from the pocket of her bathrobe, and handed it to Patchouli.

"The exact creature you described was just wandering through the mansion's garden minutes before you arrived" said Sakuya "I chased it off, but Patchouli has been studying the slime that trailed behind it".

Patchouli continued to read the note Reimu had handed her. At one point, she said to herself "that would explain the cellular structure".

"Thank you for the warning, we'll make sure to lock our windows extra tight when day breaks" said Patchouli, handing Reimu back the soggy piece of paper. "In respons to your request, no. Absolutely not. The Scarlet Mansion will not be made into a mess hall for a crowd of humans, and you'll get the same answer from Remilia, but with more teeth".

"Don't you have any concern for anyone?" shouted Reimu. "It's not just humans out there! That thing used to be Yukari! You can only hide out in here for so long before the victims of the light come back to haunt you!"

"We have sheltered from the sun and the outsiders here for longer than you have lived," Patchouli stated, firmly, "and we will continue to do so, no matter how the sun shines, as we have done since this mansion was built. Now, leave".

A battle wasn't going to solve this. If Reimu brought villagers into here, they'd be slaughtered.

A feeling of dread closed in on Reimu, and her heart felt heavy.

Sulking, she slowly walked toward the door, slammed it shut behind her, and didn't look back.

 **Kappa Valley - 134 Hours until sunrise.**

"Alright, I've got the schematics pulled up on my PDA" said Nitori. "There's a section of the complex in the south tower that's still under construction, and isn't being used for anything classified that can fit 800 evacuees. Since Utsuho moved her projects to... ...somewhere else..., there are six floors available in the east borehole wing. There would be eight, but the bottom two still have radioactive material I haven't cleaned out, so it would be best not to let anyone in there. That brings your total occupancy up to 1900 people".

"The population of Gensokyo is 2600" said Marisa, grimly. "Are you sure there isn't any more room available?"

"This is pushing the limit as it is," Nitori admitted, "and I'll be honest. I have no idea how we're going to feed everyone in Gensokyo with my tiny cucumber farm".

"Can't you make something with like... super-productive fruit?" asked Marisa.

"Genetic engineering isn't that easy. I could probably pull it off, but there's no telling what could go wrong".

"The alternative isn't very appealing" said Eirin. "As a doctor, I'd say the benefits outweigh the risks".

There was a knock on the door.

"Oh!" said Marisa. "That's probably Reimu. We'll probably be able to get a few more evacuees into the Scarlet Mansion".

Marisa opened the door, and from one look at Reimu's face, she could tell things weren't going to be that easy.


	4. Chapter 4: Life or Death

**Kappa Valley Underground Complex - 132 hours until sunrise.**

A plan had been created to evacuate the population of Gensokyo, and to warn anyone residing outside of the world to stay away during daylight hours.

If executed without incident, they would have evacuated as many people as possible in 3 days. Children received top priority, followed by parents, and then everyone else. Any evacuees who remained would be given the option to find shelter, or be euthanized via spell.

Nitori had discussed the situation with her fellow Kappa, and the available space had been converted into a shelter. All windows in the exposed portion of the citadel had been covered with opaque black wrapping.

Deep within the underground complex, a lone figure in a long, sterile lab coat leaned over a tray of clear vials. Only a single desk lamp illuminated her workstation. If there was not going to be a source solar power for six days, it was necessary to conserve what energy they had. Nitori's instructions were simple, but the process involved was incredibly complex, and insanely dangerous, especially considering there was no time to test.

Even for the most skilled biologist in the Kappa Valley, this was nothing to sneeze at. The process had to be done exactly right the first time, or it would cost the lives of what might otherwise be the last life on earth.

Keiko picked a vial from the tray, and carefully extracted a single drop with a thin syringe.

She set the vial down, and held the needle away from herself as she moved carefully to the table behind her, where two cucumber seeds sat in a Petri dish.

A barely visible amount was all that was needed. A gentle turn of a knob on the side of the syringe sent exactly that amount into each seed.

It would take roughly five minutes for the protein to work. In the meantime, Keiko disposed of the syringe, and returned to her desk.

She opened a terminal, and pulled up a window with two adjacent screens, one of which displayed a 3D model of the protein she had just applied to the seeds, the other of which displayed a wall of text.

As she read over the structural details of the protein again, the door at the back of the room creaked. She looked back, to see it slightly ajar. A dark shape moved out of her field of vision.

She checked to make sure the seeds were still where she left them - they were. She closed the terminal, and looked around.

"Who's there?"

The laboratory was quiet.

Slowly, she crept around the shelf, using the glow of her PDA's screen to light the way.

The shelves were mostly filled with empty beakers, and the occasional jar of failed experiments. At the end, there was a long walking space that encompassed the west wall of the lab. Here, too, nothing stirred.

Keiko slowly stepped sideways toward the exit, shining the PDA's soft, blue glow down each of the aisles.

Three shelves from the end, she saw something move in the corner of her eye. She examined where the movement had come from. Nobody was there.

Looking more closely, she noticed a smear of reddish brown viscous fluid on the shelf. She grabbed a vial from her coat, scooped some up to study later, and ran to the exit.

She didn't realize her mistake, until too late, when she looked straight up in horror, as the giant, pulsating mass of organs and slime hanging from the ceiling dropped down on top of her.

 **Human Village - 131 hours until sunrise.**

Given the inherent danger of living in an area frequented by youkai, it was only natural that the village had a system in place to alert its residents of danger.

Once Marisa had sounded the warning bell, people began to gather in the streets.

"Hey, kid!" someone shouted. "You'd better have a good reason for waking us up!"

"The village is being evacuated!" announced Marisa. "Sunlight is killing people, we have to get everyone underground!"

"Marisa! Get down from there!" someone else shouted.

Marisa recognized the voice, and a chill of fear ran down her spine, as she frantically searched the crowd for her father.

"I'm not lying, dad!" she cried. "It's true! The Hakurei Shrine Maiden would be here to tell you herself if she wasn't busy warning spirits from other worlds to stay away!"

"Why should we trust you?" another doubtful voice demanded. "Why would the sunlight kill people? That's crazy!"

Marisa argued with the villagers for a minute, and eventually gave up.

She fell to her knees on the balcony of the tower. What had she been thinking, opting to warn the people in the human village? Now, she was helpless. Her own friends and family refused to listen, refused to believe her, when an unearthly danger crept over the horizon that would take them all away from her if she couldn't convince them.

"What's wrong with me?" she sobbed. "Why did I think anyone would care what I said? They listen to you, Reimu, they all listen to you! You can make them stop time! Where are you?"

 **Kappa Citadel - 131 hours until sunrise.**

Nitori scrolled over an American news website from the outside world.

There was nothing at all from today.

Many sites were like this. It was as if a sudden blackout had swept across the globe, causing half of the world to fall silent.

It made sense, with what Reimu had said. The effect of the sunlight reaching those areas must have been so swift that no one had time to warn others.

As Nitori prepared to close the page, a message popped up in the corner of the terminal's screen.

It was a distress signal from the biology center.

Nitori logged into the surveillance camera system, and opened the feed from the biology center.

The room was empty. Keiko had left the laboratory a complete mess; jars and tools were lying on the floor, and the shelves were askew, some even laying on their sides.

Nitori pulled up a list of nearby camera feeds, and switched to the hallway outside the lab.

The hallway seemed empty, except for a few dark smudges on the ground, leading toward the stairwell that led up towards the citadel on the surface. Realizing that it was headed towards her, Nitori closed the terminal, stood up, and looked around for her combat suit.

She spotted it on a table at the back of the room. deactivated, in repair mode. After all these years, she hadn't been able to get the camouflage feature to work properly.

She reactivated the suit. No one was around, so she changed into it right in the middle of the warehouse.

The infrared camera was a bit glitchy, but it was otherwise functional. Nitori turned on the suit's flashlight, and went to investigate.

 **Kappa Valley Underground Complex - 131 hours until sunrise.**

Keiko wrestled her way to the outside of the membrane for long enough to catch her breath, before the creature attempted to pull her back in with another disfigured appendage.

In the murk, she could see a human skull drifting toward the edge of the appendage.

It fell on the floor in front of her, distracting the creature as it sent its appendage to retrieve it for just long enough that Keiko could work her upper body free of the creature, and grab onto the railing of the staircase. She pulled as hard as she could, and finally broke free of the mass, sending her flying over the railing, and onto the flight of stairs below.

The gelatinous substance that made up the creature smelled of unnatural chemicals, and stung to the touch. Her skin was covered in cuts and sores from being thrashed around in it for so long.

For some reason, the creature did not pursue her, and instead, continued upward. Keiko forced herself to her feet, and limped down the stairs, deeper into the complex.

With very few lights on as a power conservation measure, and Keiko's vision being blurry from shock and blood loss, it was nearly impossible to discern any shapes aside from the dim lights at either end of the hall.

She knew the way back to the lab. If she could only get there, if she could finish what she started, this would all be worth it. The door was right there, but her ears were ringing and she was so nauseous she could barely tell which way was up. Eight more meters.

Six.

Five.

Something was moving in the stairwell. It wasn't the same creature. Something else had escaped. Every time her heart beat, it was like being hit by a car.

Four.

One of the many experiments she kept lying around had been released, and now it was only going to make things worse. The stale underground air itself was screaming.

Three.

Keiko lost consciousness, and fell to the cold, white tile floor.


	5. Chapter 5: Sounding the Alarm

**Netherworld Border - 131 hours until sunrise.**

"Thank you for the warning" said Youmu Konpaku, examining the piece of paper one more time, before handing it back to Reimu.

Reimu hurried back to Gensokyo, arriving at the ruined shrine just in time to see the unearthly horrors gathering at the edge of the barrier.

They were towering, amorphous creatures, moaning, whispering, screaming and laughing all at once. Each one was covered in faces, limbs and organs, obscenely melted together in a nightmarish living soup.

There were hundreds of them, just sitting there at the edge of the barrier, staring inward at her with their disfigured, warped eyesockets.

Until now, Reimu had secretly held doubts that this threat could be real, that the earth's hour had come. Now, her hope that this was a false alarm had been melted out of her, and absorbed by the creatures that lay in wait for the sun's next victims to join their mass.

Reimu gagged, and swallowed a bit of her own vomit, before running away and taking flight.

The barrier wouldn't be able to hold them off forever. While it had some physical strength, it had been designed primarily to hold against spiritual bombardment. Whatever spirit was present in those mounds of undeath, it certainly wasn't any kind of spiritual energy the barrier was intended to detect. It shouldn't even have been able to exist.

Her first instinct was to head to the human village, and make sure the evacuation was going smoothly.

 **Human Village - 130 hours until sunrise.**

"You have to listen to me!" yelled Marisa, in tears. "I'm not going to leave this tower until I know you're safe, because I _care_ about you! I don't know where the Shrine Maiden is right now, but she told me, personally, to get you all to safety, and I will, dammit!"

Someone threw an empty gourd at her, and she had to duck out of the way.

"Why would Hakurei-sama send some random merchant's daughter to tell us the world is ending?" someone called.

"Marisa, stop this!" her father demanded.

A wave of disapproving shouts came, again, from the crowd. "If the Shrine Maiden knew the world was ending, she'd tell us right away, herself!"

"Well, here I am" said the gravely calm voice of Reimu Hakurei. "Daylight is transforming humans into indescribable horrors, unlike anything Gensokyo or the world has seen before. They're lying in wait at the barrier, for those who need further proof, take my hand, and I will carry you to up, so that you can see them yourself".

The crowd fell silent, and Reimu spoke again.

"The village is being evacuated. Bring food and clothes enough to last three days, we will take the mountain path to the Genbu Ravine. The Kappa there have agreed to let us take shelter in their underground complex".

"Three days? How are we supposed to avoid the sun?"

"You won't have to. With some help, we've slowed down the turning of the earth. We have a little over five days to get you out of here".

Panicked whispers jumped sporadically through the masses of people that lined the streets.

"Stop standing around" shouted Reimu. "Go!"

People rushed back into their houses and gathered their clothes, some dried food, and a handful of prized possessions.

Reimu propelled herself up to where Marisa sat in the tower.

Marisa was silent.

As she looked up at Reimu, it was clear to her, now, that Reimu had a different sort of power, a respect that came from her ties to the Shrine, and the oath she had taken to protect humanity at all costs.

"Marisa? Are you alright?"

"Thank you..." was all she could say.

 **Kappa Valley Underground Complex - 130 hours until sunrise.**

The sound of footsteps echoed down through the stairwell.

The door to the Biology Center creaked open, to reveal a figure, covered completely in gadgets and armor, with only her eyes visible through a protective visor.

Nitori looked down to see her own sister, motionless, emaciated, and covered in reddish-brown slime.

"K-Keiko?"

She knelt down, and picked up the unconscious Kappa.

Nitori glanced into the lab, briefly, to see if the samples were still intact.

She couldn't see all the way down the hall, so she gave up. Keiko's life was more important. The experiment could be done again if necessary.

Hurrying back up the stairwell, Nitori nearly slipped on a trail of slime that was smeared on the step.

She used the combat suit's built-in terminal to ping the complex's motion detector array. Something was moving around on the floor above her.

It was unlikely that the movement was another Kappa. All of the Kappa in the citadel above would be only just waking up around now. If not for Kaguya's help, it would have been 6:00 AM. The sun would be rising.

Nitori pulled up a camera feed from the hallway, and saw the mass of melted flesh sloshing toward the stairwell.

She quickened her pace, dashing up to the citadel, while trying to avoid jostling Keiko too much.

When she reached the workshop on the ground floor, she slammed and locked the door behind her, and set Keiko down on her carpet.

Nitori searched through her many shelves to see if she had any food, as she could tell Keiko had lost blood.

After a minute, she finally found a single cucumber wrapped in tinfoil.

She ran back over to Keiko, chipped off a piece, and held it up to her face.

Keiko opened her eyes, and coughed.

Quickly, Keiko grabbed the piece of cucumber and ate it.

Nitori handed her another piece.

After two more, Keiko told her to stop. Too much could potentially be a shock to her system.

Nitori wrapped the rest of the cucumber back in tinfoil, just as a loud banging noise came from the workshop's back door.

"It's... here" Keiko groaned.

"If you can understand me, stay back!" shouted Nitori.

The banging stopped, and, after a few seconds of terrifying silence, a gurgley, playful voice came from the other side.

"Why are you so afraid?" it teased. "The sunlight is nice, and warm. If you'd only let them try it for themselves..."

"Who are you?"

"Don't you recognize me? It's Yukariiiiiiiiii...heheheheeee"

"What the hell?"

 **Bamboo Forest of The Lost - 129 hours until sunrise.**

"Alright, Tewi, that's enough. We've got to save enough water to get us to the Genbu Ravine" said Reisen Udongien Inaba, tapping her on the shoulder.

Tewi handed her the canteen, which Reisen then closed, and hooked back onto her backpack.

"How much farther do we have to go?"

"Sixteen kilometers. It'll go by faster if you keep your feet up".

A long line of Rabbit Youkai stretched all the way back to Eientei, as the evacuation of Gensokyo began in full.

It was eerily similar, Reisen thought, to when the military had evacuated her small home town on the moon, that same day when she had been drafted into the war, never to see her family again.

The sky was dark, but still, they looked with fear at the eastern horizon, where the sun lay in wait.


	6. Chapter 6: Into the Darkness

**Unnamed Mountain Path - 122 hours until sunrise.**

The front of the line had made 2 kilometers out of the village. Things were slow, as people were still packing up at the back of the line, and many of the younger children weren't prepared for hiking uphill in the dark.

Within an hour, they would come up along a ridge, where, Reimu knew, they would catch sight of the monstrosities outside the barrier. She was prepared to reassure them that the creatures could easily be stopped with magic, to prevent panic from breaking out. She knew, however, that was a lie.

If she flew high enough, she could hear the low-pitched pulses of the barrier straining against their sheer volume, sending waves of red up toward the top of the dome-shaped field.

If any part of Gensokyo survived this, things would never be the same.

The sound of rushing air came in from her right, as Marisa flew up to join her.

She had a large suitcase tied to the back of her broomstick, filled with a couple days' clothes and some extra food wrapped in paper.

Marisa said nothing, but Reimu knew what she was thinking.

Reimu set her arm across Marisa's shoulder, and they hovered together over the long trail of humans.

 **Bamboo Forest of the Lost - 121 hours until sunrise.**

It was a younger rabbit up near the front who noticed it first. When she realized what it was, she screamed in horror.

Kaguya and Eirin stopped, and ran to see what was wrong.

Staring blankly up at them was the ghastly, pale corpse of a forest fairy.

Eirin picked it up, and examined it.

"Starvation" she said, gravely. "Something drained the life energy right out of it. The only thing that would do this to a fairy would be... ...of course".

"What?" asked Kaguya, turning to Eirin.

"Fairies' life energy comes from their inherent element. If their element vanishes from earth, the fairy starves in a manner of hours" said Eirin. "This means the sun isn't just killing people. It's killing forests, plants, everything. We can't just run out to find food at night, there won't be any. If the Kappa haven't devised some method of producing food without sunlight, even if we reach the citadel before sunrise, we're just going to starve".

"What should we do?"

"We should send someone ahead to the Kappa Citadel to warn them. I have to stay here to treat anyone who gets injured, so you'll need to go alone".

"I'm worn out from flying around" said Kaguya, "Can't someone else go?"

"The only other option would be Mokou, I'll tell her-"

Kaguya had already taken off toward the Kappa Valley at an anomalously fast pace.

"Well, that worked" Eirin muttered to herself.

 **Kappa Citadel - 120 hours until sunrise.**

Nitori had sprayed a coating of fast-drying sealant around the door to the stairwell, to keep out the thing that claimed to be Yukari.

She could hear the chilling sound of bone scraping against metal behind her.

Again, the creature spoke.

"Nitori! Help! It's got me!" it shouted, in a slightly higher-pitched voice.

It pounded on the door as if it was a human.

"You're not fooling me!" shouted Nitori. "What's your name?"

"Nitori, it's me! Yuki! Please, get this thing off of me!"

Even though Yukari had picked the name at random, it happened to be the name of one of her fellow Kappa.

Nitori slowly approached the door. Using a burst of magic energy, Nitori teleported through the door, and behind the creature, only to find that Yuki was not present.

The creature lunged at her, but she jumped out of the way, latching onto the wall of the stairwell with the suit's climbing claws. The creature dragged itself up the stairs, toward her, and she moved toward the door.

Nitori jumped down off of the wall, and tried to teleport back through the door, only to find that her suit didn't have enough energy, and wouldn't be fully charged for another 2 minutes.

The creature turned, and flowed like a liquid down the stairs toward her.

She waited anxiously for the suit's magic reserves to recharge, but, eventually, the creature was dangerously close, and she knew they would not recharge in time, so she used what charge she did have to blast the creature. It was unaffected, but she held the beam stready, turning it downward and boring a hole down through the stairwell.

The creature fell through several floors, down into the sewage systems, landing with a loud splash in a drainage canal.

Nitori checked the suit's GUI.

The magic charge was back down to 25%, and beginning to recharge.

The creature had begun to move up the shaft - Nitori could see the writhing, oily mess pulling itself up through the vault.

She backed up against the door, bracing herself.

It moved up toward her like a spider. Nitori thought about blasting through the door, but she knew that wouldn't help, and would only endanger Keiko, who was already in enough danger.

As one of its makeshift appendages grabbed hold of the edge of the staircase, Nitori heard something being sprayed from behind her, and the sealant began to crack.

The door was forced open, and Keiko pulled Nitori back into the workshop.

When Nitori stood up, she saw Keiko standing in the doorway, in her lab coat, stained with a mixture of the substance that creature was made of, and some of her own blood, firing a liquid nitrogen canister at the beast.

It froze solid, and fell back down the shaft.

"Tha- how did that work?" stuttered Nitori.

"I don't know. I hoped for the best, and it looks like I was right. It'll probably thaw out in a few minutes. We'll need to quarantine the entire central stairwell, and the upsilon sector of the sewage system"

"So, we know ice works against those things, then. Any idea where we could find Cirno?"

 **Hakurei Shrine Steps - 119 hours until sunrise.**

"You're gonna be fine!" insisted Cirno, flying as fast as she could toward the shrine. "We'll tell Reimu. She'll know what's going on, and we'll get to the bottom of this!"

Daiyousei fluttered weakly behind her.

"Cirno, I need to stop for a second. I don't feel right. I have a headache, and I'm..." she sat down on the stairs.

"Come on, you can't quit! We're almost there!"

"I just need a second..."

"Come on! I'll carry you"

Cirno picked up Daiyousei, and flew up the last steps of the shrine path, to see the hollow, ruined shell of the once sacred building rise up in front of them.

"No..." cried Cirno. "That's impossible! Reimu couldn't have been... There's no way. No way..."

"Cirno..." coughed Daiyousei. "It's up to you. You're the s- the strongest... You can stop this. I... I believe in you..."

"Daiyousei! No! You... Why? No. No. No. No. No. Wh-whyyy...?"

Cirno stood alone, in tears, in the cold night, as Gensokyo crumbled around her, and the low-pitched, alien drone of the barrier slowly wearing down reverberated over the hills, and into the darkness, where its dying screams would be answered only by the dreaded light.


	7. Chapter 7: Shattered Sky

**Unnamed Mountain Path - 107 hours until sunrise.**

Panicked whispers spread through the back of the line, as the procession finally reached the ridge, and was able to see off to the east.

The creatures had grown the size of mountains, and the barrier was wearing down.

"Reimu... how long has it been?" asked Marisa, shaken and sleep-deprived.

"This started more than a day ago, at least" said Reimu.

As they headed down from the ridge, Marisa noticed a small cave in the side of the mountain, where they could stop and rest for a while.

"I can't take it any more. We need to stop and rest"

"You're right, but... Someone will have to stand guard".

"If you want me t-"

"No, I'll do it. You need sleep, Marisa".

"But you've got to be tired!"

"Human survival was not formally made your responsibility. That's different for me, and I'm prepared to sacrifice whatever is necessary to fulfill it".

"You- Alright" Marisa said, reluctantly.

 **Kappa Citadel (Control Tower: Pi) - 105 hours until sunrise.**

Dozens of holographic screens faded into view as Nitori moved her hands over the glass of the tower's 360-degree window.

Quarantine had been established successfully, and she flagged the last automated gate to that sector of the sewage system.

"Hey" said Keiko over a radio-communicaton band. "I'm back at the lab, that thing is definitely not getting out of the sewer. Can you unlock the doors, so that I can check out the damage?"

Nitori cancelled the lockdown, and the population of the Kappa Valley wandered out into the night air.

In the complex, below, the door to Keiko's laboratory clicked open, and she stepped inside.

She slowly approached the table where she had left her experiment. The seeds were still there, but one of them had dried out, leaving only one seed, the last hope of life on earth.

Carefully, she picked it up, rolled it up in wet paper, which she placed in a test tube, which was secured in a padded, armored briefcase.

"I've got it" said Keiko, "I'm heading to the botany wing, now".

"Alright, the greenhouse uses sunlight, so any harvesting you do will have to be at night... Hold on, someone's at the front gate".

Nitori pulled up a display of the front gate camera.

"Kaguya?"

"Nitori! Th... the fairies! The sun is killing the plants, that's killing the fairies, we have to do something or we're gonna starve!"

"Whoa, whoa. Slow down. What?"

"Fairies are dying. Forest fairies. Think about what that means".

"I see. The forests are dying, because plants are affected by the sun". she turned back to the control panel for a second. "Keiko, don't use the greenhouse just yet, the ceiling needs to be replaced with sunlamps".

A computerized beeping tone played throughout the citadel, as Nitori activated the emergency alert system.

"Hello? Hi, everyone, it's me, Nitori... I have some bad news".

 **Edge of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost - 100 hours until sunrise.**

There were two paths leading out from the bamboo forest's entrance. At the front of the line, Eirin stopped the line to wait for those who were trailing behind.

Reisen sat on the cold ground and looked off into the distance. The sun had not yet reached the horizon, but a strange red glow was periodically flashing up around them, like a jumping, chaotic form of aurora borealis.

She followed the waves with her eyes, up to the center of the sky, where they came together in a bright, swirling mass of energy - the vertex of Gensokyo's barrier.

"Eirin, what's going on with the barrier?" she asked.

Eirin looked up at the sky, and saw the lights for herself.

"That shouldn't be happening" she said. "No being known to this world could-"

"What's happening to it?" Reisen demanded, but soon realized her question didn't need an answer, as the low throbbing noise that had been heard throughout Gensokyo for the last few hours suddenly fell silent, and the ancient barrier that had protected them for centuries buckled under an unnatural weight, and split outward from the vertex. Bright, red gashes resembling lightning reached down to meet the flickering waves created by the physical stress from outside.

Within seconds, it began to fall from the center in a single wave, spreading outward and raining down in shards on the land below.

Eirin began chanting very quickly in an ancient tongue, and an umbrella of white light materialized above them, just as thousands of flaming pieces of sharp, crystalline material came falling down all at once.

Behind them, more than half of the density of the Bamboo Forest was torn to shreds, leaving behind what may as well have been a wasteland.

"Everyone stay together" shouted Reisen. She frantically looked around for Tewi, but didn't see her anywhere. After a moment, she finally said "Anyone who fell behind should be considered dead. We must reach the Kappa citadel before sunrise if we are to survive".

"I should have stayed by her side" Reisen thought to herself. "Why did I go up ahead? What was I thinking?!"

 **Unnamed Mountain Path - 100 hours until sunrise.**

Reimu was exhausted, and her water canteen was almost empty.

There were fifteen kilometers ahead of them left to travel, but the villagers couldn't keep a fast pace, and their supplies would likely not last the way.

When the throbbing of the barrier under stress stopped, Reimu knew what was coming.

The shards of the barrier crashed to the ground just outside the cave entrance, sending pebbles and dust flying.

The rocks shook from the force, and a loud, muffled rumbling echoed through the cave, waking nearly everyone.

For an instant, the rumbling became much clearer, and could be heard right outside the cave.

Then, everything went black.

Deeper in the cavern, someone lit a match.

Reimu summoned a magic flame, illuminating the area around her.

Marisa, somehow, was still asleep.

Reimu shook her to wake her up, and she just rolled over.

"Wake up!" Reimu demanded, holding the magic light closer to her eyes.

"Eeegh, what?" Marisa mumbled. "Reimu?"

"THE ENTRANCE IS CAVED IN!" someone shouted. "WE'RE GOING TO DIE IN HERE!"

Reimu's eyes widened as she saw, holding the light closer to the ground, something that made her heart jump.

The cavern walls had streaks of sulfur.

Quickly, she dissolved her magic flame, and shouted to the person who had lit a match.

"This cavern is dangerous. Don't light any fires in here, or you'll blow us all up"

"How are we supposed to get to the entrance without using some kind of blast to get rid of the boulders?" asked Marisa.


	8. Chapter 8: Survival

**Scarlet Mansion - 98 hours until sunrise.**

A blink, a flash, another rush of displaced air filled her ears as time resumed.

Sakuya rushed to repair the damage that had been done to the mansion when the barrier collapsed, but she was losing hope. She had no idea how many hours of darkness remained until the light of day arrived to ultimately judge their defenses.

All of the windows, save for those on the east side of the mansion had been shattered, the curtains torn away completely. In many places, the roof had collapsed in completely. Everywhere else, it was filled with holes, where sunlight could enter.

She sat at a table in the front courtyard to catch her breath for a moment, when she heard Meiling's voice calling from near the front gate.

"Sa... ku... ya..."

She turned around to see the mansion's perimeter guardian limping toward the mansion, her eyes, pale, her movements, awkward and unnatural.

"It... hurts..."

Sakuya jumped up in horror at her zombie-like appearance.

"What happened?!"

"Help... It's... I'm..."

Sakuya was uncertain whether she should run, or go to help Meiling. She stood still.

Meiling stopped about a meter away from her.

She appeared to be crying, but the drops that flowed from her eyes weren't tears.

Sakuya's heart skipped a beat when she realized what was happening.

Meiling's face burst open, and the formless creature within jumped out toward Sakuya's mouth.

Reflexively, Sakuya stopped time, just as the creature's reach had extended right to the tip of her nose.

She ran into the mansion, locked the door, and let time resume.

Patchouli noticed her sweating and panting, with her back to the door.

"What's going on?"

"Those... Those things... Like what we saw before... was... They can... control... inside..."

"You're not making sense. What did you see out there?"

Patchouli looked out the window, and saw Meiling lying motionless on the ground, with a trail of slime leading to just underneath the doorway.

"P-patchy!" cried Sakuya. "Get away from the window!"

The glass broke as a dripping pseudo-arm grabbed hold of Patchouli's face.

It took a moment for Sakuya to come to her senses and stop time.

She pulled Patchouli away from the creature, but a small amount of its mass had already jumped into her mouth. Sakuya separated her from the main mass using a hat rack that had been sitting by the door, which proved to be a wise decision, as the substance stuck to it with determination.

She dragged Patchouli upstairs, and out of the main hallway.

When time resumed, the small amount of remaining mass jumped away and slid out under the door, leaving Patchouli coughing and frantically scratching at her face.

"It's gone!" shouted Sakuya. "Calm down, please!"

"Where are we?!"

"Second floor, the guest room with blue walls" said Sakuya. "That slime just went back to the creature. It knows where we are. We can't stay here."

"Was that..?"

"The same kind of creature from before. This one was different. It had less mass, but it definitely knew what it was doing".

"So, there are more of them, then. It stands to reason that they were behind the destruction of the barrier, which stood for generations at our borders. If so, then not one of us is capable of stopping them".

"Our only option is to keep running. We need to warn Remilia immediately, and then get out of here".

 **Unnamed Mountain Pass, Cavern - 96 hours until sunrise.**

In complete darkness, a team of villagers pulled another boulder away from the cave's entrance.

When the stone came loose, a crack became visible, through which the outside could be seen.

"Stop" said Reimu.

"Why? We've almost cleared the way!"

"If you pull another rock loose, you'll break the stability of the wall, and it'll just cave us in again".

"Then what should we do? We can't blast it out, because you said that would blow us up!"

"We'll have to think of something else. There's no point in digging forever".

"I'm tired of this!" shouted one of the villagers. "If there are explosive rocks in the cave, why don't we just move all of those to the front and light a match?

There was a round of cheering from all of the villagers, and many of them reached around to pick up rocks.

"Stop!" shouted Reimu. "No matter how many of those you pick up, if you light a match anywhere in this cave, it'll kill us all!"

"That's a load of crap! I lit a match earlier, and we were fine! I only put it out because you told me to!"

More villagers began shouting. "Yeah, what kind of expert are you? I work in a mine! You may know how to protect our village from demons, but you're no expert when it comes to rocks!"

One of the villagers lit a match, and Reimu ran to put it out, only to be caught by a group of villagers and forced to the ground.

"Please!" Reimu cried. "An open flame anywhere inside the cave could cause an explosion!"

Despite the situation, that statement gave Marisa an idea.

"Wait!"

"What do you want, now, Marisa?!" someone shouted.

"Reimu, you're saying that a flame _inside_ the cave is dangerous?"

"She's lost her mind, Marisa. Don't listen to her" said Marisa's father.

"What if we blast the rocks from the outside?"

"And how are we going to do that from the inside?!"

"It's possible, and I know how to use the opening we've made to do it" said Reimu. "Marisa's plan might just work, but only if we stop turning on each other, and you let me go".

"You could still be crazy. What exactly is your plan?"

"First, I will attach a spell scroll to Marisa's Mini-Hakkero.  
Then, we'll send it outside, since it's small enough to fit through the crack that you've opened.  
The spell is designed to allow her to channel magic to it remotely, and trigger her 'Master Spark' technique from inside.  
Everyone will need to stand clear of the opening, and Marisa," Reimu paused.

"Yes?"

"You will need to stop the blast immediately once it breaks through the rocks.  
If you stop too soon, we won't get another chance, as the spell will be used up, and your Mini-Hakkero will be out of reach.  
If you stop too late, the blast will go straight to the wall of the cavern, and we will die".

Marisa swallowed hard.

"I'll do it", she said, "let Reimu go".

The villagers released Reimu, and whoever had lit the match blew it out.

Reimu wrapped a spell scroll around Marisa's Mini-Hakkero, and climbed up the rocks, reached through, and placed it outside, facing against the boulders blocking the entrance.

She handed another scroll to Marisa, who, on trying to grab it, discovered that it felt as if it were made of solid wood.

From her point of view, it looked like she was outside the cave, holding her Mini-Hakkero against the rocks.

"Everyone stand out of the way", she heard Reimu's voice saying right next to her, although she couldn't see her.

She took a deep breath, and activated her Master Spark.

The blast immediately began to disintegrate the rocks, and the Mini-Hakkero began to fall, dragging her projected point of view down with it. With willpower, she found she was able to prevent it from falling further.

She watched the beam's progress, and held it steady.

"Get ready to stop" said Reimu.

Marisa's arm tensed up.

"3.."

"2..."

"1..."

"STOP!"

Marisa let go of the scroll, and she was immediately back inside the cave.

Tears filled her eyes when she saw that the wall was still dark.

"No! No! I'm so sorry! I failed! We're trapped here foreve-"

"Marisa," said Reimu, "The rock is half a centimeter thick"

Reimu pushed lightly on part of the wall, and it crumbled away, revealing a circular exit, where Marisa's Mini-Hakkero sat on the rocks under the night sky.

The villagers cheered, but Marisa didn't stop crying.

"It worked, Marisa!" said Reimu. "Your idea saved us all, you don't have to be sad".

"That's not why " said Marisa. "The barrier's gone, Reimu. This is the end. The sun has changed, and the world we know is crumbling away forever! Can't you see? There's only one way this can end. We're just living on borrowed time".


	9. Chapter 9: Fire, Ice, and Nightmares

**Unnamed Mountain Pass - 85 hours until sunrise.**

The odds of survival were slim. By now, everyone knew that, even the most innocent of those in the long line heading through the forest.

Marisa drifted above the trees on her broomstick, Reimu hung onto her, fast asleep. Marisa had insisted she get some rest, that she wouldn't be able to protect humanity if she couldn't protect herself.

It was a dreadful idea that the word "humanity", now, might refer only to the crowd of villagers walking onward below the trees.

As they climbed the next hill, crushing the shattered remains of the barrier under their feet, Marisa looked off to the east.

Thankfully, the sky was still dark.

Marisa wondered what the sun would look like when it arrived to destroy everything they knew.

Would it look the same as it always had, or would it be different? Would it have an alien, greenish hue? Thinking about that made a chill run down her spine.

However, she didn't think on it for long, as her eyes happened to notice that something massive and dark was sitting just below the canopy on the forest about a kilometer away.

She shook Reimu awake.

"Wh-where are we? Marisa? I've just had the weirdest dream..."

Reimu looked down at the exhausted villagers dragging themselves forward up the hill, at the grave, half-dead expression on Marisa's face, at the torn up canopy and smoldering craters splattered across Gensokyo, and she knew it wasn't a dream.

Marisa pointed out the shadow to Reimu, and they flew over in its direction.

Getting closer, they could see that it was as they feared.

A mudslide of faces, slime and bones flowed between the trees, towards the line of villagers.

"We've got to stop it somehow, or at least slow it down" said Marisa.

"Magic doesn't work. I've tried the best techniques I know. It melts, and then re-forms. No matter what you do, you'll only end up breaking it into smaller pieces that just come back together."

Suddenly, a massive tendril made of contorted faces and flesh shot up toward them.

Reflexively, Marisa blasted it with a beam of magic.

It sizzled as if it were boiling, and melted back somewhat, but the drops of melted mass fell back into the main mass, causing more of the massive slime appendages to jump out at them.

The creature stopped for a moment, and pockets of air began to form all over it.

A single, gurgling voice spoke with fifty thousand false mouths, in a chillingly playful tone.

"That tickles..." said the sea of melted life. "Why don't you come join us? There's nothing to be scared of when we're all together".

Reimu looked back, suddenly, and realized that the other end of the mass was already approaching the villagers.

"Marisa!" she called, and flew off toward them.

 **Gensokyo Airspace (Elevation: 3.1 km) - 85 hours until sunrise.**

A fairy with icy wings could be seen fluttering slowly through the air, with no destination in mind.

Tears streamed down the face of the last fairy in existence, whose element remained the strongest when all others had gone to join the melted mounds of madness.

"The strongest". It was a curse, in the end.

She flew higher and higher. She wanted to run away and never return.

As she flew higher, she began to see a faint red line on the horizon.

A bird flew by about 200 meters above her, before suddenly slowing down, and appearing to change shape.

It looked as if it had melted in mid-air and turned into a teardrop.

Cirno looked over the horizon again.

She could see the coast of Japan, and that very thin, faint glow on the most distant water.

It was blood-red.

Cirno flew downward as fast as she could, until she was flying so fast that she began to heat up from the air resistance.

As her wings began to melt from the heat, she feared that she would become like the bird she had seen.

She brought herself back to a slower speed, and was relieved to find that not to be the case.

She looked to the east, and could no longer see the faint red line on the water.

She continued downward as fast as it was safe for her to fly, all the while looking around Gensokyo.

The human village was dark, but a streak of light seemed to be slowly crawling up over a hill near the Genbu Ravine.

Without warning, a section near the middle, consisting of about 1/5 of the light went dark.

A beam of white shot out of the air, and a flurry of red flashes came after it, both coming from the sky above the dark spot, aimed directly at it.

Something began to rise out of the forest. It was massive, and darker-colored.

Whatever it was, Cirno had a feeling that it was the same destructive force which had taken the lives of all of her friends.

With renewed determination, she flew toward the shadow as fast as she could.

 **Unnamed Mountain Pass - 84 hours until sunrise.**

The horrible mass towered above the line of panicked villagers, writhing and sloshing through the trees.

Reimu used another series of barrier spells in an attempt to contain it, but it continued spreading upward, seeping through the smallest gaps in the fields created by her barrier scrolls.

Only too late did she realize why it was expanding upward, when the entire mound suddenly began to fall toward her.

She flew out of the way, but a strand of mass shot out and grabbed her by the arm.

Marisa wasted no time in cutting it off from the main mass with a quick burst of magic.

The part of it that was still attached crawled up her shoulder to her face.

Reimu managed to shoot away a large chunk of it, but the remaining mass grabbed onto her face and attempted to force itself into her mouth.

Reimu plugged her nose, and held her breath, but flying used energy that she wasn't going to get back unless she could get oxygen.

Marisa watched in horror as Reimu struggled to hold out.

Reimu could feel her skin crawling.

Her lungs wanted to breathe, so much that her subconscious tried to breathe even as she held her nose as tight as she could.

If she opened her mouth, that creature would jump down her throat. She had no idea what it planned to do, but it couldn't be good.

Her head was spinning, and she was just about ready to give in.

Suddenly, she felt a cold wind on her face- uncomfortably cold, in fact.

She looked down to see that the mass was no longer clinging violently to her face, and instead, was completely still, with a white, crystalline pattern visible on its surface.

Reimu let go of her nose, and the frozen chunk of sun-creature slid off of her hand and down to the ground, where it shattered.

"Wh-what happened?" Reimu said aloud, relieved and confused.

Marisa sat on her broom next to her, looking down in disbelief at the mass below.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you" she said.

Reimu looked to see for herself, as Cirno, the tiny ice fairy, stood facing the wall of melted lifeforms, a shadow over her face, and the expression of pure wrath burning in her eyes.

"We should do all we can to help her" said Marisa.

"Right", said Reimu, blasting a chunk of the mass to drive it back off the trail.

A perfect fractal cut across another chunk of the mass as Cirno threw everything she had at it.

"Break it apart, she can freeze it more easily!" shouted Reimu. "It looks like this thing has a weakness, after all!"

Marisa shot six explosive magic orbs into the largest part of the mass, and Cirno quickly froze them all.

"Everyone, get moving" Marisa called to the villagers. "We'll keep this thing down, you need to get to the Kappa Citadel alive, before sunrise!"

 **Genbu Ravine - 76 hours until sunrise.**

Kaguya had opted to tie up her dress, as it was making navigation difficult, which was not a risk one could afford to take while carefully stepping down a narrow trail going down along a cliff face.

Reisen looked down at her feet, not exchanging glances with anyone.

She wondered if there would even be a time to mourn the death of Tewi, who had been torn to shreds when the barrier fell.

She was still laying there, alone, amid the bamboo.

Reisen tried not to think of what it had been like, or worse, what it would be like when the sun came to melt her corpse.

There was no going back to retrieve her.

That was her fate.

It hurt too much to think about, so Reisen tried to clear her mind.

In the distance, the blue lights of the Kappa Citadel could be seen reflecting off of the opposite cliff wall.

It was just around the corner.

There was no hurry, but no one dared to even consider resting.

In the air above the citadel, a utility drone held a long, white banner that read "shelter", illuminated by a single halogen lamp.

They rounded the corner, and the compound came into view.

At least sixty rectangular buildings were arranged in a grid, increasing in height toward the center of the citadel.

In between the medium-height buildings, at equal distance from each other, stood four control towers labelled with greek letters.

The citadel on the surface was smaller than the human village, but the underground complex was much larger.

Nitori and at least six other Kappa stood at the front gates, directing everyone down into the safer parts of the complex.

Initially, the Kappa, too, had been skeptical of the danger, up until the barrier fell, at which point, they knew.

The citadel had taken only a small amount of damage, but Control Tower Gamma had been rendered inaccessible by the damage.

Nitori didn't need to ask why the amount of evacuees was so small. She could guess.

The look on Reisen's face only made her certain of it.


	10. Chapter 10: When Day Breaks

**If you want to feel at ease, stop reading.  
This story is a "Tragedy" for a reason.**

 **This story is not suitable for children, or those who are easily disturbed.**

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 **Genbu Ravine Trail - 11 hours until sunrise.**

A thin line of light had appeared on the horizon.

The villagers continued forward, as Marisa and Reimu followed, looking off the horizon with a bottomless spiral of emotions pulling them from inside.

As they saw the streak of pure crimson looming over the mountain, they were terrified.

As they knew what they had lost, their eyes filled with tears.

As they feared what they were about to lose, a heavy dread wrapped itself around them and made it difficult to breathe.

Heeding Cirno's warning, they flew low to the ground.

Deep within the complex, Kaguya felt her grip on Luna 2 failing.

They had only been able to stand for so long, together, but they had done everything in their power to survive.

There was still a chance that the humans could make it to the citadel before dawn.

Above, the villagers continued downward, the glassy shards of a ruined paradise cracking beneath their feet.

They reached the citadel just an hour before dawn, and the team of Kappa led the weary travelers down into the safety of the underground complex.

Some, they led to the shelters.

Others were rushed straight to the medical areas, starving, dehydrated and traumatized.

A few minutes later, as Reimu stood talking to Nitori, there was a knock on the door.

Outside, Sakuya Izayoi stood, her clothes torn and mud-covered, her eyes heavy, carrying Remilia, who lay unconscious in her arms.

Beside her, stood Flandre, carrying Patchouli over her shoulder.

"What do _you_ want?" asked Reimu.

"Please, in these last hours, if you have any room left, the Scarlet Mansion has been destroyed"

Reimu's eyes went dark, and a sick grin spread across her face.

Tears ran down her cheeks, and she laughed with all the rage and pain that had built up inside her.

"I can't believe you'd even ask me that, you worthless piece of shit! Not too long ago, when I came to you to make that same request, Sakuya, I didn't receive even the slightest bit of human kindness."

Reimu paused, holding her face in her hand.

"It's so hilariously ironic, I think I'm going to fucking puke! Sakuya, Sakuya, Sakuya. You realize I swore an oath to protect _humans_ , right? HOW CAN YOU CALL YOURSELF HUMAN? GIVE ME ONE DAMNED REASON WHY I SHOULD PROTECT YOU!"

Reimu turned around and stormed toward the entrance to the complex, tears still flowing from her eyes.

She stopped.

"No".

"I am human, too" said Reimu.

She turned back to face Sakuya, who had fallen to her knees, and was slamming her fist into the ground.

"As much as I can not forgive you in my heart, Izayoi Sakuya, I can't afford to hold a grudge toward anyone, even the most evil of all humanity, when the last hours of life as we know it are on the horizon".

Sakuya stood up. Silently, Nitori led them into the complex, where they would join the Lunar Rabbits and the human villagers in the shelter of the Kappa's last stronghold.

 **Kappa Citadel Re-purposed Underground Shelter Area - sunrise.**

A blazing sun poured a wave of crimson into the sky as it climbed over the hills.

Within seconds, the beautiful land of Gensokyo bowed down before Apollo's broken star, melting into sludge and becoming one in madness.

All of humanity (roughly 800 individuals) watched in despair from digital displays, as the whole world was taken and twisted before their eyes.

Marisa and Reimu held each other's hands tight.

Throughout the complex, everyone knew the same thing, and no one dared say it.

It was then that something happened that no amount of emotional fortitude could have prepared them for.

A voice.

Young, it was.

Tewi's voice.

"Reisen?"

It was different. Something about it was gurgling, it had been changed.

Reisen Udongein Inaba looked up toward the speaker in the Rabbits' shelter area.

"Are you there? This is where we were going, right? I'm sorry, I think I got lost, but we're all together now!"

Reisen didn't speak, she couldn't move.

She just stared, her mouth open and her eyes wide with total despair.

"Where are you? Come on, it's such a beautiful day, I want to go play in the fields!"

There wasn't going to be an answer. No words could describe the silence that held those who waited in the shelter.

"Cirno-chan?"

Cirno fainted.

"It's me! Come on, where are you? I want to be together with you again! We could be together forever if you'd just come out!"

Reimu closed her eyes.

"Please don't say it, please don't say it, please don't say it" said Reimu.

A different voice spoke. It was much older, and a male voice, from the sound.

"Reimu, you don't have to hide, wherever you are. We're still human, and we're happier than ever together. This is how it was meant to be, this is so peaceful".

"Then it is time" said Reimu, standing up, tears flowing again from her eyes.

In the hallway, Reisen ran past, with Eirin chasing close behind. "HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND, REISEN?!"

Reimu heard the front gate of the complex being forced open.

Eirin appeared in the doorway to the office where Reimu, Marisa, Nitori and Cirno were.

"Did she..." said Nitori.

"It happened before I knew it. She just... melted" Eirin removed her hat, and closed her eyes. "I hope she will be happy".

"It is time" said Reimu, standing up. "It seems I am the one who will fulfill the Hakurei Prophecy. That... I am ready".

"Reimu, what do you mean?" asked Marisa.

"Human Sign: Spirit's Promise" said Reimu.

There was a blinding flash of light, and Reimu appeared to split into two.

One of her forms went limp, and fell to the floor.

"R-reimu... What are you doing? Don't... Don't do anything s-stup.."

"Marisa" said Reimu, smiling sadly. "I'm already dead".

Marisa grabbed at Reimu's spirit that stood before her, but instead fell forward onto her lifeless body.

"No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No" Marisa pleaded.

"Marisa" said Reimu, placing her hand on Marisa's forehead.

"You will always have my memory. I will make this promise to you with the words of the Hakurei God".

Marisa held Reimu's corpse in her arms, and cried.

"REEEEEEEEIIIIIIIMUUUUUUUUUU"...

Reimu's spirit walked out, straight through the door of the complex, and into the sunlight, which rippled against her spirit like smoke.

Marisa chased after her, but Eirin and Ntori held her back.

Reimu raised her arms to the sky, and looked straight up into the sun.

Her heart burst open and the twin serpents, red and white, left her body.

The spirits of Yin and Yang spiraled up into the sky, intertwined and opposite, together and apart, until their essence spiraled out of control and fused into a double helix, base pairs spelling out in pure harmony the recipe for human existence, DNA.

The strand of DNA came together into a single beam that shot straight into the sun and pierced it with ten thousand generations' will to live.

The sun screamed, and split the sky with spiraling flowers of blue, driving the corrupted red hue away with a dance of pure blue beauty.

The world sang, and cried, and the masses of wallowing red began to jump back and forth, congealing into humanoid shapes, which stood up, and stumbled in the natural light of true day, until they were as they had always been, sentient apes standing naked before the will of the universe.

"What?" said Yukari, looking around. "Why am I naked in some sewer tunnel?"

In the light of day, Reisen held Tewi in her arms, and they cried together.

Marisa ran outside, and scratched frantically at the ground where Reimu had disappeared.

"Reimu! Reimu!"

She looked up at the blue sky, at the trees in the wind, and heard the birds chirping on Reimu's beautiful day.

"I will remember you" she said.

And she did.

She remembered Reimu, even when the Foundation came.

She remembered Reimu when they deployed the "Scranton Reality Anchors", hellish spheres that drained away all of the wonder from the world around her, and tainted it with their oppressive air.

She would remember Reimu, no matter how much amnestic they tried to use on her.

She would remember Reimu when she was classified as SCP-8192-A-30, and contained within the perimeter of SCP-8192-B, which had once been her home, where no less than 20 Scranton Reality Anchors were to be deployed at all times, where armed guards where posted, and no artifacts of significance to the Shintō faith were to be present at any time, and all testing had to be approved by the O5 council.

She would always remember Reimu Hakurei, her dearest friend.


End file.
